An Obsession With History

by Wachtel, Andrew Baruch

• ISBN13: 9780804725941
• ISBN10: 0804725942
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1995-08-01
• Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr

Summary

The author traces the role of Russian literature over two hundred years in creating and sustaining the notion of the singularity of their own history and of its relationship to the history of the outside world.The author describes the development of this tradition through an analysis of major works including Karamzin's History of the Russian State, Tolstoy's War and Peace, and Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. His analysis of this tradition has a dual purpose: to provide a window on the peculiarly Russian attitude toward history and to allow us to read some major works of Russian literature in a new light. The book will be of interest not only to Slavists, but to anyone concerned with the interaction between history and literature.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
A Historical Character in Search of a Genre: Vadim of Novgorod and the Prehistory of Intergeneric Dialogue in Russia	p. 19
Karamzin's History of the Russian State and the Codification of the Principles of Intergeneric Dialogue	p. 46
Incarnations of Intergeneric Dialogue in the Age of Pushkin	p. 66
War and Peace: Intergeneric Dialogue in One Text	p. 88
Utopian Historiography: the Brothers Karamazov as Historical Allegory	p. 123
Futurist Historians?	p. 148
Literary History, Criticism, and Fiction: the Case of Tynianov	p. 177
Back to the Chronicles: Solzhenitsyn's the Red Wheel	p. 198
Conclusion	p. 219
Reference Matter	p. 227
Notes	p. 229
Works Cited	p. 261
Index	p. 271
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